News and politics live updates: Albanese, Chalmers walk back hated changes from broken promises Budget

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Former ABC chairman Maurice Newman is backing One Nation leader Pauline Hanson’s plan to make the public broadcaster a subscription service in the big cities as Federal Government funding was restricted to regional areas.

Mr Newman, who chaired the Australian Broadcasting Corporation from 2007 to 2012, said the ABC was undeserving of its $1.2 billion in annual Federal Government funding given it increasingly catered to a hard left audience.

“I’m on the record, for some years now, saying that I thought it should be a subscription service,” he told The Nightly.

“I’ve been fairly consistent in my view that we shouldn’t be paying $1.2 billion a year for something that is ubiquitous on the internet and anywhere else.”

In fact, the ABC was allocated $1.343 billion for this financial year in the federal Budget in May, growing to $1.39m in 2026-27.

He also cited ratings figures to show the ABC has been losing viewers and listeners, making it irrelevant.

“They’re having to preach to a harder and harder core on the left in order to keep whatever they have left and, of course, that means people at the margin are peeling off,” Mr Newman said.

Read the full story.

The head of the Australian War Memorial says a new gallery on the Afghanistan conflict will be an “evolving” exhibit that must acknowledge the Brereton Report and allegations of war crimes.

Matt Anderson has insisted the new gallery set to open on Tuesday in Canberra will strike a balance to capture the “complexity of service” Aussie soldiers faced during the war in Afghanistan.

Speaking at the memorial on Thursday, Mr Anderson acknowledged questions about Ben Roberts-Smith’s attendance and defended event invites for Victoria Cross recipients as “standard practice”.

A Sydney court granted the decorated soldier and alleged war criminal a bail variation this week so he can attend the official opening alongside parliamentarians and other prominent guests.

“There are four living Victoria Cross recipients, and it is standard practice for the memorial for them to be invited to major commemorative events. Beyond that, I’m not prepared to say or do anything that would undermine presumption of innocence,” he said.

Mr Anderson said “there’s no single truth” in the stories which have returned from the conflict.

“There isn’t a single narrative, there is no common line that runs from 9/11 through to the evacuation of Kabul in August of 2021,” he said.

Read more.

Mark Riley writes: GetUp! can get stuffed.

The stunt the activist group pulled at the National Press Club this week wasn’t just juvenile, it was stupidly counterproductive.

That banner it lowered behind Pauline Hanson as she made her first-ever address to the club has immediately become a juicy piece of red meat for the One Nation base.

It is a symbol of everything they see as being wrong with the system.

In the eyes of Hanson’s growing band of supporters, that dumb act simply proves they are being marginalised, ridiculed and denigrated by the “mainstream”, its institutions and the ruling elite.

Instead of elevating the inherent contradictions between what Hanson says about representing working Australians and what she actually does in the Parliament, it has become another rallying cry for her party’s cause.

Well done, GetUp! What a bunch of knuckleheads.

Read Mark Riley’s opinion piece here.

The Government has revealed a raft of carve-outs and amendments to its capital gains tax and negative gearing changes in a bid to clear the barnacles from the legislation it hopes to push through the Senate in the next fortnight.

More small businesses will be allowed to use capital gains tax (CGT) exemptions and the Senate will get a final say over future changes to Labor’s tax reforms under a suite of backdowns Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers unveiled just four weeks after the Budget was released.

The annual turnover threshold for small businesses using the most common exemption form capital gains taxes will be lifted from $2 million to $10 million – a change that will be included in the legislation now before the Upper House.

The Government says that means all 2.7 million active small businesses and 98 per cent of all businesses will be able to use the concession.

It has also backed down on plans to impose a minimum 30 per cent tax on payouts from discretionary testamentary trusts, which are established in people’s wills, that opponents had labelled a “death tax”.

Read the full story.

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has declared the Albanese government’s Budget is “in tatters” following Labor’s decision to back down on key measures.

The Prime Minister has announced the government will now allow more small businesses to access the most-used existing capital gains tax exemption by increasing the annual turnover threshold from $2 million to $10 million.

Speaking in Sydney, Mr Taylor says the government must now rework the entire Budget.

“This Budget is in chaos. It is in tatters, because the government simply got it wrong from the start,” he said.

“No point going on with these carve-outs. Scrap it, scrap the bill, start the Budget again”.

WA Premier Roger Cook has been one of the first State leaders to react to Anthony Albanese’s Budget CGT backflip, crediting the PM for listening.

“I haven’t got my head around the full details of the CGT carve-outs this morning. I think you were saying he’s literally on his feet at the moment, but they’re important,” he said on Thursday morning at a UDIA breakfast in Perth.

“That’s an important part of what he committed to doing, and that is listening to the community and concerns that people have around some of those tax changes.

“Importantly, it’s significantly changed the application of the CGT rules in relation to family trusts, and that will impact a lot of small businesses, and from that perspective, that’s very welcome, and obviously, we will now look at the detail in relation to that.

“What we want to see from governments, and it’s one of the things I always say to my team, I say to my team, stay humble and listen, keep your ears on at all times, and so hopefully the Federal government has listened to the concerns that were voiced in relation to the Budget announcements, and that we see some good policy put in place”

Anthony Albanese is asked about the GetUp protest stunt that briefly interrupted One Nation leader Pauline Hanson’s speech to the National Press Club yesterday.

He says it’s a matter for police, who are investigating, but “quite clearly, these actions can be counterproductive”.

The Prime Minister reiterates his call for people to turn the temperature down in political debate.

“I think that people should be allowed to go to the National Press Club and address the press club with whatever views people have in a respectful manner, and that should be treated respectfully,” he says.

Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers continue to insist that it’s business as usual to have several rounds of legislation for big tax changes.

“We understand that there’s never a unanimous view about economic reform, and particularly about tax reform. It’s always contested, it’s always contentious, but it will be worth it,” Dr Chalmers says.

The Prime Minister says they’ve had consultation “across the Senate”.

The Senate committee examining the tax changes is due to hand down its report tomorrow.

Dr Chalmers says the changes will see the government forego about $475 million over the next four years, or one-seventeenth of the total amount it was forecast to raise.

A sheepish Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers have delivered a sensational Budget backdown, walking back parts of their broken promises fiscal plan that turned Aussies against Labor.

The government will allow more small businesses to access the most-used existing capital gains tax exemption by increasing the annual turnover threshold from $2 million to $10 million, Mr Albanese has announced.

The Prime Minister and Treasurer Chalmers will also release a discussion paper detailing the carve-outs from changes to the CGT discounts for innovative businesses.

Their spate of barnacle-clearing also involves exempting all testamentary trusts from the CGT changes that were included in the Budget, thus sidestepping the accusations that it was imposing a death tax.